Anglo American Literature report of Daniel Defoe's Novel

1. Daniel Defoe:
‘A Journal of the
Plague Year' - 1722

2. Biography
• Born between 1659-1661
• Born in the parish of St. Giles
Cripplegate in London
• Father worked as a candle maker
(tallow chandler)
• Born as Daniel Foe, and added
the de in front of his last name
to make it sound aristocratic.

3. Writing Styles
• He wrote over 500 works of writing on geography, politics, crime,
religion, and many more topics.
• Considered by many historians to be the first true novelist.
• Many of his pieces often portrays a criminal as the lead character.

4. DANIEL DEFOE
• A Journal of the Plague Year is Daniel Defoe’s novel of the Great Plague
of London in 1665, published fifty-seven years after the event in 1722.
• At the time of publication there was alarm that plague in Marseilles
could cross into England.
• It is a kind of practical handbook of what to do, and more importantly,
what to avoid during a deadly outbreak.
• Rich in detail.
• No definitive figure exists for the total number of deaths from the
Plague
• The spirit of the book calls to mind the Blitz era, with its dark East
End setting and themes of human distress and fortitude.

6. • The author, signed only as 'H.F.', is the main character
with few other names given. He is the ever-present
narrator, right in the middle of things, gathering stories in
the pubs and on the street, and we see everything through
his eyes, if occasionally, somewhat voyeuristically.

7. • the wars being over, the armies disbanded, and the
royal family and the monarchy being restored…the
town was computed to have in it above a hundred
thousand people more than it ever held before…All the
old soldiers set up trade here…All people were grown
gay and luxurious, and the joy of the Restoration had
brought a vast many families to London.

8. •
The net effect was
more people living in
crowded and
insanitary conditions
than ever before,
alongside a thriving
population of rats,
whose fleas carried
the plague virus.

9. • December 1664 – the outbreak started
• By June, it had spread to the City.
• ‘ Now there died four within the city, one in Wood Street, one in
Fenchurch Street and two in Crooked Lane’
• It took 6 months for the virus to establish itself are portrayed as a
time of ignorance and denial as a kind of ‘phoney war’ mentality
held sway:

10. people had for a long time a strong belief that the
plague would not come to the city, nor into Southwark,
nor into Wapping or Ratcliff at all…many removed
from the suburbs…into those eastern and south sides
as for safety, and, as I verily believe, carried the plague
amongst them there.

11. • Low-level fear was exploited and as unease grew, so did the
number of street astrologers, wizards and quack doctors.
• The quick-witted, fast talking con-man is represented by a
'quacking sort of fellow' who advertises himself as a self-styled
expert, diagnosing plague symptoms with the slogan 'he gives his
advice to the poor for nothing' in capital letters.

12. • Defoe likens the clamour to a type of mass hysteria: 'mad upon
their running after quacks and mountebanks…it is incredible how
the posts of houses and corners of streets were plastered over
with doctor’s bills and papers of ignorant fellows'.

13. • Defoe switches styles between a straightforward re-telling of
events and first hand, eye-witness accounts. He vividly describes
the suffering the symptoms caused:
those spots they called the tokens were really gangrenous
spots, or mortified flesh in small knobs as broad as a little
silver penny, and as hard as a piece of callous or horn..no
instrument could cut them, so that many died roaring mad
with the torment.

14. • The intensity and violence of their deaths is described in the
manner a Gothic horror story:
mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy, some
dying of mere grief as a passion…others frightened into
idiotism..
I wish I could repeat the very sound of those groans and of
those exclamations that I heard from some poor dying
creatures when in the height of their agonies…and that I
could make them that read this hear, as I imagine I now hear
them, for the sound seems still to ring in my ears.

15. • The most controversial containment measure ordered by the Lord
Mayor’s Office was the policy of shutting up houses. If illness was
evident or suspected, the City had the power to sequester a
property and shut it up, along with it’s inhabitants, for a period of
one month, or until the virus had passed.
• Defoe spends a large part of the novel decrying the practice for
its inhumanity and general ineffectiveness.

16. St. Botolph’s, Aldgate rebuilt 1740’s
St Botolph’s shortly before it
was rebuilt

18. • The area known locally as the Butchers Row is particularly
badly hit and as he watches:
out of my own windows…from Harrow Alley, a place
full of poor people, most of them belonging to the
butchers, or to employment depending on the
butchery…Almost all the dead part of the night the
dead-cart stood at the end of that alley…and as the
churchyard was but a little way off, if it went away full
it would soon be back again.

19. • He finally ventures out again on a hunch that the river might offer
better protection where he met a solitary lighter-man.
• He asks the man how things are: “Alas sir!...all dead or sick. Here
are very few families in this part, or that village (pointing at
Poplar), where half of them are not dead already, and the rest
sick”. When asked how he can make a living at such a time he
replies,

20. • “Do you see these five ships lie at anchor (pointing down
the river a good way below the town), and do you see eight
or ten ships lie at chain there? (pointing above the
town)…All these ships have families on board… I tend
on them and fetch things for them…I row up to Greenwich
and buy fresh meat there, and sometimes I row down the
river to Woolwich and buy there; then I go to single farm-
houses on the Kentish side, where I am known…and buy
fowls, eggs and butter, and bring them to the ships”.

22. • The total number of deaths according to the bills was
68,590, but Defoe disputes this and estimates that over
100,000 were killed by the plague virus. At its peak in late
August, early September he believes 8,000 people died
per week, and relates the anecdotal claim that 3,000 died
in one night alone.